Barfield & McKinney's Podcast Experiment

Indie Business Club

Hi, Mel here.

Before the recap, huge thanks to Ralph Cunningham and Nikki Pilkington for being our first paid subscribers 🥹💖

And on the subject of love and appreciation, our next LinkedIn audio event is on Valentine's Day Wednesday 14th February at midday (UK time). Our topic is CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS. Join our LinkedIn event here so LinkedIn nag-reminds you.

Last week we were joined by Dave Harland, Ben's Copy Or Die copywriting agency cofounder. We talked all things SUBCONTRACTING including a bit of back story on how Copy Or Die came about.

Ben and Dave met on Twitter (RIP) ages ago, and became pals. More recently, Dave was only able to take on around one in twenty inbound enquiries (lovely problem to have) and was giving away the rest of his leads. Ben suggested he'd happily take the leads and pay commission on those that converted. So he did.

Subcontracting is part of the Barfield and McKinney origin story too; I answered a call Ben put out on Twitter (RIP, again).

We worked together on a couple of projects, and Dave also subcontracted to me separately. Presumably after Ben confirmed I'm "not a below average copywriter" - direct testimonial from him this week 😏

Then Ben and Dave also jointly subcontracted to me as Copy or Die, so it's all just one big subcontracty sandwich with me as the premium copywriter smoked salmon, who you should totally hire.

I can get away with saying that coz Copy Or Die and Dave have had a collective TEN mentions and counting in this supposedly BARFIELD & McKinney Substack 🤔

Anyway, we spoke about the BENEFITS of subcontracting work:

* you get rewarded for your marketing efforts

* you can take on projects outside your niche/preference

* you get to collaborate with (hopefully) awesome, "not below average" people

* it's the only way to grow when you're a company of one

* you get a fresh perspective and ideas

* it's win-win-win for client, subcontractor and subcontractee (I stubbornly refuse to accept this isn't a real word)

And things to BE MINDFUL OF:

* will the end client know work's subcontracted?

* subcontract to people you trust (we both highly rate Bonnie Harrington jussayin)

* ideal scenario - the person doing the work gets direct access and can use the work in their portfolio

* include it in your contracts/agreements

* profit isn’t icky - you’re running a business so you should get paid for your part in the process

* make sure you add a large enough buffer of time for deadlines to comfortably review subcontracted work before it has to go to the client

* it's not a get rich quick scheme - subcontracting out work involves a fair bit of graft

Writers can fill in a form to be considered for Copy Or Die projects here: www.copyordie.co.uk/writers

And for advertorial balance, clients can be considered for Mel Barfield copywriting projects by completing this here google form. 😉

See you on V-Day,

B&MFind us on LinkedIn:I’m here. Ben’s here.Dave’s here.

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